Walleye rigs: four ways to put a bait where walleye actually are

The four rigs, by speed

Everything about walleye rigging follows from one question: how fast do you want the bait moving? Walleye will chase a spinner blade at 1.5 mph when they are feeding and refuse a bait that moves at all when they are not. That is the whole decision.

1. The bottom bouncer and spinner harness

This is the rig that defines walleye fishing on big water, and it is two separate pieces of hardware that people treat as one.

The bottom bouncer is a weight on an L-shaped stainless wire. Northland publishes its Rock-Runner with a 10 in wire feeler in weights from 1/4 oz to 3 oz, for 10 to 17 lb mainline. The wire leg taps bottom while the lead body and your bait ride above it, which is why it crosses rock and timber that would bury a plain sinker.

The spinner harness is what you tow behind it. Northland publishes its Baitfish harness as a 60 in snell on a Bionic leader, with a Colorado blade and either a #3 blade with a #4 hook or a #4 blade with #2 and #4 hooks. A Colorado blade is the round one: it turns slowly, thumps hard, and lifts in the water column, which is exactly what you want behind a bottom bouncer at a crawl.

Weight, by depth. One ounce per ten feet of water, which puts your line at roughly 45 degrees behind the boat. In 20 ft, run 2 oz. In 30 ft, run 3 oz. Let line out until you feel the wire tick bottom, then stop. If you cannot feel bottom, you are too light; if the bouncer drags constantly, you are too heavy or too slow.

Speed. 1 to 1.5 mph. Below that a Colorado blade stops turning properly. Above it the harness starts to rise and you lose the bottom contact the whole rig exists to maintain.

A note on the name: our crappie rigs page uses “bottom bouncer” for a quite different thing — an egg sinker with a jig on a leader above it. Both names are in common use. The walleye version is the wire one described here.

2. The Lindy rig, for fish that will not chase

The Lindy rig is a walking slip sinker, a bead, a barrel swivel and a long light leader to a single hook with live bait on it. It is the rig for the other half of walleye fishing: cold water, high pressure, post-front fish that will follow a bait for twenty feet and never commit.

Lindy publishes the No-Snagg slip sinker in 1/8, 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 3/4 and 1 oz, two per card, parts NS100 through NS125. The shape is the point: a banana-curved body with a smooth coating, designed to glide over bottom rather than wedge into it. Lindy lists the intended uses as Lindy rigging, Carolina rigging, drifting and trolling, which is the same family of slow presentations.

Leader length is the adjustment nobody makes. Start at 3 ft. Go to 5 or 6 ft when the water is clear or the fish are suspending slightly off bottom. Shorten to 2 ft when weeds are fouling it. Fluorocarbon, 6 to 10 lb — our fluorocarbon page has the published diameters.

The part that actually catches fish: when you feel a pickup, open the bail or hold the line loose and let the fish move with the bait for several seconds before you tighten. The sinker is a slip sinker so the fish feels nothing. Setting instantly is the commonest way to lose walleye on this rig.

A Carolina Keeper replaces the barrel swivel if you want to change leader length without re-tying. Presco publishes it as an 8-pack in red or clear: squeeze it open with pliers, slide it, release. One knot in the rig instead of three.

3. The slip float, for structure you can sit on

A slip float turns depth into a dial. Bobber stop, bead, float, split shot, hook. The float runs free on the line and stops at the knot, so you can fish 15 ft down and still cast a 7 ft rod.

For walleye this is the rock-pile and weed-edge rig, and it is the best rig there is for fishing a precise depth over a spot you have found on sonar. Thill publishes its Pro Series slip floats in 7/8 in (PS120) and 1 in (PS125), balsa bodied, with a brass grommet for the line path. The grommet is why a balsa float slides smoothly instead of grabbing.

Set the stop so the bait hangs 12 to 18 in above bottom, or just above the top of the weeds. A leech or a half crawler on a size 4 to 6 hook, one split shot 18 in up. Our bobbers and floats page covers the float choice in detail.

This is also the rig to hand to someone who has never caught a walleye, because the float does the depth-keeping and the bite is visible rather than felt.

4. The jig, which is still the answer more often than any rig

A jig is not really a rig, which is why it gets left off lists like this. It is also what most walleye are caught on.

1/8 oz for under 10 ft, 1/4 oz for 10 to 15 ft, 3/8 oz deeper or in wind. A minnow, a plastic or a half crawler. Cast it, let it hit bottom, lift and drop. Our jig heads page covers the head shapes and walleye lures page covers the plastics.

The reason to learn the other three rigs is that a jig needs you to be roughly over the fish. The harness covers water, the Lindy rig works on fish that will not move, and the float holds a depth you cannot hold by hand.

The rod and line this all assumes

Trolling a bouncer wants a different rod from casting a jig, and this is the one place walleye rigging gets expensive.

For the bouncer and harness: a medium-power rod with a softer tip, 7 ft or more, because a stiff tip rips a crawler off a hook when a fish takes it at trolling speed. Mainline 10 to 17 lb, which is what Northland publishes for the Rock-Runner.

For the jig and the Lindy rig: a fast-tipped medium-light with real backbone, so you can feel a bite transmitted up a slack leader. Braid with a fluorocarbon leader. Our walleye rods page works through both, and the complete walleye setup puts the whole thing together.

You also want a rod holder if you are going to troll a bouncer for more than an hour. Holding a 3 oz weight at a crawl is tiring in a way that sounds like a joke until you have done it.

What we are not telling you

We have not tested any of this and we are not publishing a figure we did not read off a manufacturer’s page. The weight-per-depth and speed numbers above are the standard starting points that the hardware is sold against — Northland publishes the Rock-Runner specifically for “drifting and trolling live-bait snells, spinner rigs, spoons and minnowbaits” — but your boat, your line diameter and your wind will move them. Let line out until the wire ticks, and trust that over any number on a page.